The possessive perfect construction in Estonian
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Liina Lindström
und
Ilona Tragel
Estonian, a Finno-Ugric language, is usually considered not to have a possessive perfect (have-perfect). In this article, we argue that there is a construction which is functionally similar to the have-perfect in many European languages. It is based on a possessive construction, as with the have-perfect in other European languages, but since the Estonian possessive construction is based on a location schema, it is different from constructions in other European languages in terms of the morphosyntactic means it employs. We describe the grammaticalization of the construction and its relation to others that use these same morphosyntactic means, that is, impersonal and passive constructions. Though all these constructions seem rather similar, the possessive perfect belongs to neither the impersonal nor the passive paradigm. The meaning of the possessive perfect is mainly resultative, and it seems to be motivated by the meaning of the passive past participle which is a part of the construction.
© Mouton de Gruyter – Societas Linguistica Europaea
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Compositional and constructional reduplication in Kam-Tai languages
- Metaphorical projection, subjectification and English speech act verbs
- The possessive perfect construction in Estonian
- The semantic field of continuation: Periphrastic blijven and continuer à
- The role of age in Austrians' perceptions of the frequency of use and likeability of lexical Teutonisms and Austriacisms
- Typology meets usage: The case of the prohibitive infinitive in Dutch
- A comprehensive account of full-verb inversion in English
- Book reviews
- Acknowledgements
- Conference announcement
- Publications received
- Index to Volume 44
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Compositional and constructional reduplication in Kam-Tai languages
- Metaphorical projection, subjectification and English speech act verbs
- The possessive perfect construction in Estonian
- The semantic field of continuation: Periphrastic blijven and continuer à
- The role of age in Austrians' perceptions of the frequency of use and likeability of lexical Teutonisms and Austriacisms
- Typology meets usage: The case of the prohibitive infinitive in Dutch
- A comprehensive account of full-verb inversion in English
- Book reviews
- Acknowledgements
- Conference announcement
- Publications received
- Index to Volume 44
